{"id":539529,"date":"2026-07-13T16:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T16:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/539529\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T16:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T16:57:10","slug":"xabi-alonso-new-chelsea-manager-wants-to-keep-enzo-fernandez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/539529\/","title":{"rendered":"Xabi Alonso: New Chelsea manager wants to keep Enzo Fernandez"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alonso entered the Drake Suite, which celebrates Chelsea<\/a>‘s league title-winning managers, and said it was a “privilege and honour” to lead a club with such a successful history.<\/p>\n

He has been training a large squad, including Cole Palmer, Joao Pedro and Levi Colwill, at Cobham, with only eight Chelsea<\/a> players away at the World Cup.<\/p>\n

The 44-year-old explained his reasons for joining Chelsea<\/a> after Enzo Maresca left in January, and his successor Liam Rosenior was sacked after less than four months in charge.<\/p>\n

“The excitement is the club, the squad and the opportunity, through this ownership, to be at this great club, create a bond with the supporters, win games and be successful,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I want to enjoy it, be part of this group and work together with the sporting directors, the players and the staff here.<\/p>\n

“We need to make important decisions – the right decisions – but I think the foundations have already been built.<\/p>\n

“We need to keep building a mentality to be competitive on the pitch, win games and enjoy doing it.”<\/p>\n

Chelsea<\/a> typically target Champions League qualification as a minimum requirement each season and, when asked whether he needed to secure European football, Alonso said: “For sure, that’s a goal. But to reach that goal you have to do many things right.<\/p>\n

“I will be part of that process. How we play, how we see ourselves and how we approach each game is my job, and that is why I am looking forward to having the whole squad available.<\/p>\n

“We have only just started and these have been happy early days so far, but for sure we want to be there [in Europe].<\/p>\n

“Time will tell, but we are ambitious, and at Chelsea<\/a> you need to share that energy and hunger to succeed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alonso entered the Drake Suite, which celebrates Chelsea‘s league title-winning managers, and said it was a “privilege and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-539529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}